Swans on Tea

The Periodic Coffee Table
By embedding all element samples in clear acrylic, they are beautifully presented and also protected from tarnishing. This format also helps to addresses health and safety issues, as all potentially toxic or corrosive substances are permanently encased in a thick layer of robust resin. Argon gas and mineral oil is further used [...]

DelFly Micro Air Vehicle Weighs Just Three Grams
The ‘dragonfly’ has a tiny camera (about 0.5 grams) on board that transmits its signals to a ground station. With software developed by TU Delft itself, objects can then be recognised independently. The camera transmits TV quality images, and therefore allows the DelFly II to be operated from [...]

I don’t care what Ted Kennedy and his Nantucket neighbors think. I like a lot of the wind turbine designs.
Wind turbine bonanza
OObject: beautiful wind turbines
via Kottke

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Kill the wabbit goblet, kill the goblet!

Splendid Oscillation
Learn how to destroy expensive glassware with the power of sound
Cool video showing a resonantly-driven crystal goblet, with a strobe slightly off-resonance. Then it breaks. And in slo-mo (though not super slo-mo, which would be extra cool)
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But if you can, since it’s 60 LY across, don’t ask me if your butt looks big.
Banner yet wave
[A] ribbon of gas, compressed and glowing due to a shock wave that slammed into it. The shock came from Supernova 1006, a star that detonated 7000 light years away from us. This was not a massive [...]

My, what bright, glowing optical fibers you have.
One of my online compatriots recently explained a quick and easy way to do some IR photography. I felt compelled to try, and it was pretty easy. Cheap webcams are the most direct way to do this for a few reasons:
— they’re cheap. [...]

Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History
You know what I’m talking about, those were the days and all that jazz. But for real. Feelings and moments from times when everything was innocent and your only concern was your bike, a big carpet full of Lego bricks, and the amount of cocoa in your cereals.
After [...]

Real-time satellite tracking ISS, GPS satellites, Hubble, etc. Even the shuttle when it’s up there.
via Kottke

Bizarre Lunar Orbits
“The Moon is extraordinarily lumpy, gravitationally speaking,” Konopliv continues. “I don’t mean mountains or physical topography. I mean in mass. What appear to be flat seas of lunar lava have huge positive gravitational anomalies—that is, their mass and thus their gravitational fields are significantly stronger than the rest of the lunar crust.” Known [...]

Is it Bernardo vs Riff or Bernardo vs Tony?
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via The Quantum Pontiff

A few weeks ago, over at Built on facts, I threw Matt a bit of a knuckleball in the comments.
[C]onsider a solid bar of the same index [as water]. You send in the pulse of light (assume a really good AR coating so there’s no reflection). What happens to the speed of the bar?
This was [...]